Dear diary,
This idea “Let’s not sink to their level” — what would it be like if we applied it to violence? The reason I ask this is that, being interested in pacifism (I’d say that, tho I’m willing to change my mind, I’m pretty much a pacifist myself, at the moment) I’m used to hearing the subtle disagreements between fellow peaceniks regarding their anti-war stance. Some say that all wars are wrong: no war is justified (this is my current opinion). Some say that some wars are justified, depending on how many innocents can be saved by fighting in the battles — and these people tend to assert that the defeat of Fascism would be a passable reason to participate in war. And then there are people like my mother: she believes that her own country the United States can do no wrong, and that all other countries are always worth fighting, as long as the U.S. leadership tells us that we need to attack them preemptively — my mother believes in “peace thru strength”, in other words: wielding a ginormous military as a deterrent to potential conflict; the idea is that peace is born because no one dares draw nigh to touch your bayonet; and peace is sustained because you never stop “accidentally” bayoneting everyone in the vicinity, and corpses can’t complain.
Now there are some anti-war minds who say that, altho they agree with people like I myself who declare that warfare — which is to say: organized violence — is always wrong; nevertheless unorganized violence can be justified or at least morally permitted. For example, imagine that you are taking a stroll down the aisle of a church in the evening, and you note, out of the corner of your eye, at the far end of the back pew, a disturbance: one of the priests is attempting to molest a child — so, without planning your actions, following your instinct, you impulsively rush over to stop the evil before it can occur: you grab the priest and heft back his hulking form, with all your might, off and away from the terrified lad; and, in the process, you accidentally choke the priest to death, because you happened to grab him by his huge flabby neck. You note that this priest resembles, at least in his upper body, the character Jabba the Hutt from the film Return of the Jedi (1983). Incidentally — and I swear I didn’t think of this till just now — Princess Leia from the same film ends up choking Jabba to death in the very same manner as you did to the priest just now, albeit she used a thick metal chain instead of her bare hands; but that’s only because she was confined to his mobile throne and forced to wear an immodest outfit: so it was fitting that she used the very means of her subjugation to overthrow the tyrant who had enslaved her.
Anyway, my point is that sometimes violence is justified, as long as it’s done by a single individual in the heat of passion, and not premeditated or organized by any group of businesspersons in an air-conditioned room.
Actually, I wonder about that concept “premeditation”. Is it always bad? Cuz what if a priest is known to creep into your orphanage every night at the same hour to molest a new boy in your communal bedroom, and this aggressor moves from east to west, just like heaven’s sun, from one bed to the next across the room; and tomorrow shall be your turn with the pious rapist: so you draw up a plan to foil this priest when he approaches — you set up a spring-gun, which is what we call a cannon that is rigged to fire when a triggering device, such as a length of yarn stretched close to the ground, is tripped by contact of sufficient force to “spring” the trigger so that anyone stumbling over or treading on it would cause the weapon to discharge. Would this setup be sinful?—to allow a priest, premeditatively and with malice aforethought, to stumble into slaughtering himself, only since you had probable cause to expect an affront?
But what I really wanted to get at is this notion that I brought up in the beginning: This idea “Let’s not sink to their level” — I really wanna know what would it be like if we applied it to retaliative violence?
I mean, say that you’re running for political office; and your opponent’s campaign, in an attempt to ruin your chances attracting the populace, accuses you of being a bloodthirsty vampire. Then one of your interns who is loyal to your own campaign, during the round-table meeting that you hold every Thursday at 3 p.m. sez:
“I am beside myself with frustration over the tactics of the enemy’s forces: I cannot believe that they accused our spotless candidate Bryan Ray of being a vampire. My recommendation is that we retaliate by accusing their own stupid candidate, the Apostle Paul of Tarsus, of being a vampire as well. I’m not suggesting that we use the qualifier ‘bloodthirsty’, because I don’t wanna engage in vicious mudslinging; but since it’s true that Bryan’s a vampire, and it’s equally true that Paul has been a vampire for just as many centuries, then I don’t see why we can’t smear them directly back.”
The more level-headed members of the staff would be right to tell this loyal intern that, although her rage is cherished, and her historical knowledge is impressive, it would be better for the Bryan Ray campaign to avoid aping our foeman Saint Paul’s slimy tactics, for — and I quote — “We don’t want to sink to that asshole’s level.”
Therefore, what happens, in this instance? — Well, of course, the Apostle Paul wins the presidency. The church is his, for at least two thousand years; give or take a few thousand more, depending on whether he gets re-elected.
Yet, was it detrimental to Bryan himself, as a statesman — this decision to forgo retaliating in kind during the electoral contest?
The answer is NO: it was detrimental to his campaign, but not to his person. Campaigns come and go; they are part of the natural world; whereas The Spirit lives forever. So this classy & dignified move was just the price that immortals must pay to remain distinguished.
Now I wonder if maybe the same type of reasoning could benefit our thinking about justified violence. What if, even when one’s house is broken into and one is threatened most heinously by upperclassmen (I mean their lower-class henchmen, of course: armed bureaucrats; for the ruling class never would deign to commit their own crimes), instead of protecting oneself, one simply and passively allowed the intruder to have his way with one? This seems to me to be what, on a larger scale and in an economic sense, Main Street is permitting Wall Street to do. And I agree: Main Street should welcome every advancement of Wall Street; for otherwise it will be revealed that there was equality between the two hemispheres all along, but one was trying hard to win while the other was deliberately allowing its infant offspring the victory.
Do you see the difference? In the earlier example, it was a nasty old lecherous priest threatening to abuse an innocent child. But at present it’s a spoiled child (Wall Street) playing chess against a supercomputer (Main Street). Thus I applaud my working-class siblings for showing divine mercy in letting them capture your most valuable pieces — your queen, your house; & all your basic needs.
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(Now I feel guilty that this entry didn’t overstay its welcome, so I’ll add an unrelated postscript.)
P.S.
I wish I had the nerve to ask my neighbors in the suburbs where it was that they learned to care about their lawns so much. Cuz I have a yard which is a medium-small rectangle, just like theirs; but I can’t find anything inside my heart that naturally cares about this piece of land’s appearance. Of course I would prefer that it looked like heaven rather than hell, and right now my yard looks like hell, so I’d obediently repent and ask forgiveness, if such posing would move its maker to bless it with beauty. But I don’t wanna go out there and wrestle with my lawn, to try to convert it into something it doesn’t wanna be. If it enjoys looking partly bald, with ugly dirt patches everywhere, and having moss and crabgrass covering more than 30% of its body, plus over a hundred thousand dandelions & other rare exotic weeds — then I accept it as it is.
So where did my neighbors learn to care so much about their plot of grass? Is there a class called “Why you should care about the look of your lawn, O Suburbanite”? If so, then I need to sign up and cram for the final. Maybe there’s hope for me: maybe I’m teachable. Maybe if I attend a lecture or two, I’ll have a Damascus Epiphany and shout “Eureka!” Maybe I’ll finally grasp why I should not allow my yard to double as a landfill. — But until I discover that wisdom, my stance is this:
Once you get your own yard in tiptop shape, then you sit in your reclining lawn chair and relax, feeling good about yourself. But note your view: Your entire vision, even the periphery, is filled with the sight of other worser neighbor’s lawns. Bryan’s lawn is an obscenity: it looks like the Valley of the Shadow of Death; and everyone else’s lawn is barely half-alive: not anywhere as lush as YOUR lawn, Mr. Hardworking Homeowner.
My point is that when you labor until you sweat blood to make your personal property presentable, the chief beneficiaries of your actions are those who live within the proximity; in this case: Old Man Bryan, that lazy devil across the street, and his dimwitted minions.
And Bryan really and truly loves the look of your landscaping: its sight brings cheer to his heart every day. It even helps him ignore the thot of making improvements to his own lawn. This adds insult to injury.
So here’s my proposition: Since we all share a community, and our eyes can see far beyond what any one of us individually has control over, it would please us ALL if we pooled our resources to make sure that every lawn gets the same royal treatment. We should therefore appoint a group of landscapers who shall be paid collectively by the community, and this municipal grass-grooming outfit should care for the entire neighborhood as if it’s one vast lawn — that way, there won’t be a checkerboard with some yards looking nice while others are naughty.
Does that make sense? I’m saying: let’s deal with our communal environs in a communistic way. — We could even cooperate to manufacture a giant android replica of Stalin, & erect prison camps everywhere, in case the militant capitalists among us are worried that the pleasant effect of our grass-grooming service might entice folks to dissociate the concept of socialism from authoritarianism.
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